The city seemed to collapse on itself. Unknown, unlit lanes doubled back in a maze. The loitering late afternoon sun conveyed both an ideal light as well as the danger of oncoming dusk. The walkways inevitably lead to a central plaza, the heart of the labyrinth. Peering to distant corners completed the surrealism of the de Chirico streetscape.
Around a turn, and down well-worn stone steps, tentatively navigated by my sandaled feet, a child’s face was illuminated by the candles she was selling. The rest of her head, sketched in a conté crayon chiaroscuro by dark, asymmetrical bangs of hair, barely hovered over the edge of her cart. She asked if I would buy a candle. There was no object exchanged for my rupee, only an ephemeral benediction: a wave of incense, a chant and a blessing. The transaction of a process, rather than a commodity. Something that would outlive the melting of her wax lanterns. The act of pausing—itself an anchor among unfamiliar streets. Enchanted, I asked her name. That she shared a name with my sister was both comforting and incongruous. Once the rite was over, the girl and her cart were soon left behind in the traveler’s rush, the anxiety to map unknown territory, to see what’s beyond the next bend.
Even at this hour of twilight, the streets were dense: pilgrims, refugees, monks, merchants, tourists. All circumambulating the stupa at the heart of the square. There was an order to this pageant of piety. The most devout were in a trance, murmuring prayers while shifting prayer beads. Others took the opportunity for religious exercise: a stroll and a chat. At times, the shopkeepers and tourists gathered outside of this orbit, both eager and anxious about negotiating with each other.
Beyond the perimeter of tidy buildings that followed the curve of the shrine, the architecture of the city failed. Accelerated by strife, a surge in migration from the countryside had led to ramshackle development. Housing blocks of uncertain construction quality stood verandah to verandah. Powerlines formed dangerous, droopy spiderwebs. The village this had once been persistently clung to narrow lanes, unaware of the metropolis that had subsumed it. There had been no provision for sanitation or trash. All of which made its way inexorably down gutters, into gullies, through canals, aggregating in streams and finally choking the sacred river that wended its way through the city. Interspersed, private religious campuses stood neatly outside this disorder; like ivy league quadrangles with their leafy confines introverted from the urban tumult around them. Faux traditional facades had replaced the intricate woodwork of older structures, many of which had been torn down in misguided modernization.
The engineer staying in the same guest house was there to study evacuation routes should an earthquake revisit the valley. Newspapers published grim portents of such a cataclysm and the death toll it would inflict.
As I was unaccustomed to its streets, the country too seemed unknown to itself. Emerging from a decade of war, it was busy reconsidering its institutions, the role of its military, the militarism of its society. A leadership change had put antagonists in power, not without controversy. In the turmoil, earlier fractures had resurfaced: who was native, what was foreign, whose culture should take precedence?
You deserve this, the armchair Marxist, comfortably ensconced in his ideology, told the new prime minister, overlooking allegations of abuses in his assumption of power.
I deserve this, thought the incumbent mayor, as he proceeded to rewrite the election laws. It was alright for him to undermine democracy, as long as suitable amenities were provided. He means well, said an acquaintance, impressed with his managerial skills.
Perhaps we all made such bargains with the city. Empower me, so I can do Good. Provide me earthly delights, and I will eventually seek higher spirituality. Distract me now, so I can contemplate later. In the confusion, the chaos, we sometimes abstracted the city itself into a surface. Hard walls and sharp edges resolved to manageable volumes and varnishes. From our slender apartments, we walked concrete sidewalks, to gummed steps, down to a platform excavated beneath city streets, migrated into metal tubes that seemed to pneumatically bring us to steel high-rises, where we spent our days before glowing electronic screens. We celebrated daylight at the moments when building setbacks allowed for the penetration of the sun. We gasped for air in our vest pocket parks. We huddled for solitude in our personal listening devices. We asked for silence so we could orchestrate our own sounds.
Or did the city bring us together? Did we coalesce democratically, and discordantly, listening to one another’s voices? Opposing the confines of pre-determined street grids and subverting the pretended order of aggressive authority. Did we imbue the template of the city before us with patches of our own DNA? Shed in sweat, in learning, in industry, in compassion, in conflict, in creativity.
2012.01.10
